Gainesville: Tony Bartone Friday summary

Bartone Races To Provisional No. 7 At Gators
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 16) -- Tony Bartone and the Lucas Oil Funny Car
headed by 'Big Jim' Dunn recorded a 4.831 elapsed time to position
themselves in the provisional No. 7 position after Friday's...

Bartone Races To Provisional No. 7 At Gators

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (March 16) -- Tony Bartone and the Lucas Oil Funny Car
headed by 'Big Jim' Dunn recorded a 4.831 elapsed time to position
themselves in the provisional No. 7 position after Friday's qualifying
for the running of the 38th annual ACDelco Gatornationals at the famed
Gainesville Raceway.

Being on the outside of qualifying for the first two NHRA
season-opening events hasn't deterred the Dunn team and going into
Gators, their spirits were high and with their great run today has only
targeted that direction in the right place with greater enthusiasm.

"Just persistence, working on the tune up since missing by
just a little at Phoenix and Pomona has put
us here," said a happy Bartone. "This is the same motor setup
basically, and we've been working on the clutch, working on the chassis
and trying to get the race car down the track. I'm glad we're in the
No. 7 spot and see if we can pick it up a little bit tomorrow we should
stay in the top half of the field for Sunday and that would be great for
the Lucas Oil Funny Car.

"We started the season with a bunch of new parts and it's just getting
laps on those elements are making them perform better taking us in the
right direction.

Having a Florida residence in Del Ray Beach, in many ways, has all the
components of offering Bartone the chance to claim Gainesville Raceway as
a second home track on the 23-race NHRA POWERade Funny Car tour.

"I have a lot of family and friends and you can tell by my Southern
accent that this is definitely a home track for me," said a sarcastic
Bartone, who is a native of Long Island City, N.Y.

Qualifying continues with two more qualifying sessions at 1 and 3:30 p.m.
EDT for the professional rounds along with ESPN2 airing qualifying
results with a two-hour program at 1 a.m. early Sunday morning.